Early childhood language memory in the speech perception of international adoptees

It is as yet unclear whether the benefits of early linguistic experiences can be maintained without at least some minimal continued exposure to the language. This study compared 12 adults adopted from Korea to the US as young children (all but one prior to age one year) to 13 participants who had no prior exposure to Korean to examine whether relearning can aid in accessing early childhood language memory. All 25 participants were recruited and tested during the second week of first-semester college Korean language classes. They completed a language background questionnaire and interview, a childhood slang task and a Korean phoneme identification task. Results revealed an advantage for adoptee participants in identifying some Korean phonemes, suggesting that some components of early childhood language memory can remain intact despite many years of disuse, and that relearning a language can help in accessing such a memory. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009.published_or_final_versio

Production benefits of childhood overhearing

The current study assessed whether overhearing Spanish during childhood helps later Spanish pronunciation in adulthood. Our preliminary report based on a subset of the data [Au et al., Psychol. Sci. 13, 238-243 (2002)] revealed that adults who overheard Spanish during childhood had better Spanish pronunciation, but not better morphosyntax, than adult learners of Spanish who had no childhood experience with Spanish. We now present data from the full sample with additional morphosyntax and pronunciation assessments, as well as measures to help rule out possible confounding prosodic factors such as speech rate, phrasing, and stress placement. Three groups of undergraduates were compared: 15 Spanish-English bilinguals (native Spanish speakers), 15 late learners of Spanish who overheard Spanish during childhood (childhood overhearers), 15 late learners of Spanish who had no regular experience with Spanish until middle or high school (typical late L2 learners). Results confirmed a pronunciation advantage for the childhood overhearers over the typical late L2 learners on all measures: phonetic analyses (VOT and degree of lenition), accent ratings (phoneme and story production), but no benefit in morphosyntax. Importantly, the pronunciation advantage did not seem attributable to prosodic factors. These findings illustrate the specificity of overhearers' advantage to phonological production. © 2003 Acoustical Society of America.published_or_final_versio

The Social Costs in Communication Hiccups Between Native and Nonnative Speakers

It is well-established that native speakers perceive nonnative speakers with strong foreign accents, compared with those with a more nativelike accent, as less intelligent and competent, less ambitious and dependable as coworkers, and less comfortable around native speakers. But little is known about how nonnative speakers themselves are affected when communication hiccups—often due to incorrect or accented pronunciations—occur in their conversations with native speakers. In this experiment, mispronunciations of an English word were elicited from native Chinese speakers in phone conversations via the Internet with an American English speaker, who then either asked for clarification of the word or showed no confusion about the word but asked about something else. Chinese speakers’ reactions were measured using a combination of self-reports, facial affective coding, and skin-conductance responses. When the American asked for clarification—compared with when he did not—Chinese speakers were left feeling more anxious, embarrassed, and unsure of their English abilities, as well as feeling less positive about the American, finding him less attractive socially and their conversation with him less enjoyable.postprin

MAVIS: Multi-Camera Augmented Visual-Inertial SLAM using SE2(3) Based Exact IMU Pre-integration

We present a novel optimization-based Visual-Inertial SLAM system designed for multiple partially overlapped camera systems, named MAVIS. Our framework fully exploits the benefits of wide field-of-view from multi-camera systems, and the metric scale measurements provided by an inertial measurement unit (IMU). We introduce an improved IMU pre-integration formulation based on the exponential function of an automorphism of SE_2(3), which can effectively enhance tracking performance under fast rotational motion and extended integration time. Furthermore, we extend conventional front-end tracking and back-end optimization module designed for monocular or stereo setup towards multi-camera systems, and introduce implementation details that contribute to the performance of our system in challenging scenarios. The practical validity of our approach is supported by our experiments on public datasets. Our MAVIS won the first place in all the vision-IMU tracks (single and multi-session SLAM) on Hilti SLAM Challenge 2023 with 1.7 times the score compared to the second place.Comment: video link: https://youtu.be/Q_jZSjhNFf

High-rate aluminium yolk-shell nanoparticle anode for Li-ion battery with long cycle life and ultrahigh capacity

Alloy-type anodes such as silicon and tin are gaining popularity in rechargeable Li-ion batteries, but their rate/cycling capabilities should be improved. Here by making yolk-shell nanocomposite of aluminium core (30 nm in diameter) and TiO[subscript 2] shell (~3 nm in thickness), with a tunable interspace, we achieve 10 C charge/discharge rate with reversible capacity exceeding 650 mAh g[superscript −1] after 500 cycles, with a 3 mg cm[superscript −2] loading. At 1 C, the capacity is approximately 1,200 mAh g[superscript −1] after 500 cycles. Our one-pot synthesis route is simple and industrially scalable. This result may reverse the lagging status of aluminium among high-theoretical-capacity anodes.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant DMR-1120901)National Natural Science Foundation (China) (51221291)National Natural Science Foundation (China) (51172119